Dictionary

delf en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English delf, delve, dælf (“a quarry, clay pit, hole; an artificial watercourse, a canal, a ditch, a trench; a grave; a pitfall”), from Old English delf, ġedelf (“delving, digging”) and dælf (“that which is dug, delf, ditch”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban (“to dig”), from Proto-Germanic *delbaną (“to dig”). More at delve.

Meanings

1. (UK, archaic, dialectal) A mine, quarry, pit dug; ditch.
2. A charge representing a square sod of turf, traditionally taking the form of a simple square (e.g. in the middle of an escutcheon), although modernly sometimes represented with the grass in profile.
   • two delves gules
3. (alt-of, alternative) Alternative form of delft (“style of earthenware”).
   alt of delft
   • Five nothings in five plates of delf 1723, Jonathan Swift, Stella at Wood Park:
   • That's all—do what we do, but noblier done— / Use plate, whereas we eat our meals off delf, / (To use a figure). 1864, Robert Browning, “Mr. Sludge, "The Medium"”, in Wikisource, line 832, retrieved 18 Jan 2012:
   • Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an upper storey, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments spluttered up around my father's legs. 1848 April – 1849 October, E[dward] Bulwer-Lytton, chapter IV, in The Caxtons: A Family Picture, volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1849, →OCLC, part I, page 26:
   • Men can't munch from meatless pots and doughless delf. 1941, Sarah Atherton, Mark's Own, Bobbs-Merrill:

Forms

Deriveds

stonedelf